Factions

There is a perpetual war within the Lost Lands, one that often spills into the territories held by the Grand Empire of Karadia. Many organizations of the Grand Empire often participate in that war on their own, theoretically making them into factions in that war. This article will include a short summary of all the factions save for those aligned with the Grand Empire itself, and can be safely considered to be a list of threats that one can encounter in the Lost Lands.

The Fallen

The factions of the Fallen are the followers of the Hierarchs, the high gods that were corrupted and are now trying to force their ideals (often very twisted) upon the imperial cosmology. They are a permanent threat to the Grand Empire, and one that can be considered to be of the greatest priority to the Grand Empire (only partially mitigated by the assistance of the Exarchs and the forces of the Imperial Cult).
The Immutable Hierarchy are the legions of Tyrannus, seeked to establish a tyranny of strict and immutable societal hierarchy, built on terror and complete annihilation of all who dare to step out of line. Its forces wield terror as a weapon, and are capable of cracking weaker minds into mindless obedience with enough fear. They are also known to corrupt ambitious and corrupted rulers into their servitude, being directly or indirectly responsible for majority of true oppression and tyrannical governments within the continent.
The Shadowlight Covenant is the force of anarchy and revolution. Its armies are a chaotic mess of secret schemes and deals, and its servants are know to be in equal degrees paranoid and inspiring. They are also utterly unpredictable and prone to 'it was all part of the plan' moments when someone manages to strike a major blow against their armies. Their main magical themes seem to be the usage of shadows, some blood and a lot of advanced techmaturgy (on the level when it starts bordering mad science). They are also responsible for majority of societal upheaval in the Grand Empire, as their cults do their best to inspire riots, revolts and revolutions whenever and wherever they can.
The Rapturous Ecstasy is the force of hedonism and lust. Its armies are - somehow - even more unpredictable than those of the Shadowlight Covenant. While they are often if not in most cases led by pure self-indulgence, sometimes this is just a cover. You never know if that Ecstasy army is invading you because their leader lusts after your country's princess or because it's all part of an ingenious master plan. The Ecstasy forces are also often underestimated as armies of drunks, obese gluttons and whores, making a discovery that their gods often reward them for their indulgences in a way that makes them stronger (and way more functional) an often painful one.
The Breathless Tide is the army of death. It seeks to end the division between life and death by replacing both with undeath. It typically includes armies of undead (often if not mostly expandable) ruled by a close caste of very powerful (and sometimes weirdly cultured) sapient greater undead, often former cultists of the Tide that managed to get what they wanted. Who, in turn, tend to follow a singular necromantic overlord. While slaying of such warlord is often enough to disperse the armies of the Tide, it's rarely an easy achievement. Ironically, the Tide often allows the Tide's rulers and cults to make tactical decisions on their own, making the Tide a surprisingly common temporary ally of the Grand Empire against even worse threats.
The Rampant Bloom is the army of filth and nature gone wrong. It seeks to flood the world in monsters, destroying ecosystems and replacing them with a wastelands where all lifeforms seek to devour each other. They unleash horrible (and very quickly multiplying) monstrosities upon the world, that however tend to be more of a pest - unless there is a witch coven to guide them in their indomitable march towards the end of life as we know it. Worst, the diseases are also within the preferred weaponry of the Bloom, which makes fighting against them rather hard - sometimes only after people you know start to cough you discover that destroying that witch coven was merely a part of its plan.
The Nine Hordes are the forces of barbarism, who look down on the civilization as something that makes you week. They can call million of primitive tribesmen to their ranks, and bolster them further with legions of spirits who are in for murder, pillage, enslavement and general rapine. Ironically, the Nine Hordes are quite often friendly towards the Grand Empire (making some scholars question the fall of their gods) - after all, are you really a fallen god when your servants can be held at bay by paying them a tribute or pointing towards other enemies? And some of them can be recruites as auxiliaries for the client-states armies.
The Pentagram are the forces of ultimate, eldritch evil. Its servants can easily warp your mind and body with their very presence, changing you forever into something that will neither look nor think like a mortal. Its armies seek to destroy the world, and then warp what's left into a shape that would drive any mortal insane merely by being seen. This alone makes them the enemy of all other factions, as the Fallen want to remade the universe in their image - and while some of their visions appear faintly compatible, they will all lose if the Pentagram wins.

The Exarchs

While the simply number of the factions following the Exarchs might indicate that they are losing their war against the Hierarchs, that's not exactly a case. The Exarchs are focusing their efforts on the higher worlds of the universe while letting mortals fight for themselves (but with the divine support). Arguably, the Grand Empire is the strongest faction from the ones following the exarchs. What's more, those factions are cooperating (what rarely can be said about the Hierarchs), and at least in some cases tend to be quite powerful.
The Ardent Flame is the organization following the head god of the imperial cult, Honor. They are simply incredibly overpowered, with what is established to be its footsoldiers capable of overwhelming archdaemons from other factions. However their radically high power level means that they are extremely rare in the Material Worlds, as they are simply busy fighting in places when they can exert their entire strength. Typically only the most powerful of Hierarch attacks on the Grand Empire (or outstanding cases of honor in battle, such as a group of warriors deciding to do a hopeless last stand in order to give refugees time to flee) can actually draw the Ardent Flame's attention.
The Unbroken Host are what can be considered to be the regular army of the Exarchs (dedicated specificially to Bellaminae) in the Material Worlds, designed to be able to operate there easily. It's composed of the valorous Dead, who were formed into numerous armies surrounding some particularly skillful and famous military commander from the imperial history. Its soldiers are greatly empowered and given a very good equipment, and unlike many spirits they can truly understand the limits and minds of those they are summoned to fight alongside.
The Searing Light are the death squads of Exarchs. Dedicates to Sol, armies of the Light are continuously fighting their war in the Lost Lands, seeking to undermine and destroy all holdouts of the Hierarchs. They use light magic, which is capable of causing incredibly damage to creatures that Sol considers impure (like the undead). However the even more important job of the Searing Light is to pursue soul and time magic users, and immediately exterminate them whenever and wherever they are found. The extreme tenacity and brutality of the Light makes many ask themselves if Sol didn't actually fall...

Criminals and Subversives

In short, common, long-term existing subversive groups that exist in the Grand Empire yet possess a significant presence in the Lost Lands. They are often overlooked due to their significantly lower profile than the armies of the Hierarchs and some of the more aggresive others, but their corruptive influence over the Grand Empire (from which they, after all, recruit their members) remains a problem.
The Council of Shadows is a criminal syndicate that exists for centuries, despite being repeatedly decimated if not downright annihilated by the Grand Empire - each time it's destroyed, it simply grows back. It's ruthless, it's utterly amoral, and its very existence goes against the imperial law. However it's smart enough to often allow the Grand Empire to do secretly what it cannot do officially, and is often somewhat tolerated. At least regionally - and until it makes a step too far, as then the hammer of imperial justice strikes through, and tens of thousands of its members turn into penal slaves.
The Northern Wind is a splinter group of the Imperial Magic Guild that has managed to take a lot of knowledge about genetic modifications and very advanced alchemy with it. Today they are the pioneers on the fields of human modifications - they seek to perfect humans through mass usage of genemodding, mentalsculpting, surgical augmentations and aggresive eugenics. They also have an uncomfortable amount of connections with the Council of Shadows and tend to appear rather human supremacist (due to humans, being the most moldable of species, simply agreeing best with what the Wind does).
The Revolutionary Front is a splinter group of the Imperial Magic Guild that seeks to make all humans into mages - as a first step of getting rid of what they see as inequality. While some of their postulates are fine (such as the end of slavery), the fact that each of their temporarily successful revolutions leads to thousands improperly trained mages falling and joining the hierarchs make them into a massive problem. Their reckless experimentation towards the mass-spread of the magical powers certainly doesn't help, as it has already caused a handful of disasters.
The New Dawn is a splinter group of the Imperial Magic Guild that decided that they need to do something to destroy the Lost Lands (even if it means getting rid of all magic) due to them believing in the theory that it's spread is a sign of the incoming transformation of the Prime Material World into a Spiritual World. They split off over that and pursued numerous researches over the concept of antimagic, with some gossis suggesting that it was done per under-the-table imperial order. If so, then recently the entire group has went renegade, as it suddenly began to organize raids on imperial facilities.
The Divine Wisdom is a splinter group of the Imperial Magic Guild dedicated to understanding the secrets of godhood and leading the population of the Grand Empire into a mass-ascendancy event that will change all of its inhabitants into at least lesser gods (that will then be able to build their own worlds at will). Unfortunately, the Divine Wisdom is trying to achieve that through horrific experiments and tinkering with things that no sane person should. Including the soul magic. Worse, it appears to be (at least somewhat) working, as most of the higher rankers of the Wisdom are in fact the terrifyingly powerful godlikes, capable of ignoring at least some rules of magic.

Others

Factions who are neither criminals, nor directly connected to the imperial religion. It includes total outsiders, groups that nobody is sure where they came from, some historical remnants and finally other religions that are for some reason poking their nose into the imperial cosmology's lands.
The Umbral Bond is a cooperative of ancient enigmatics, each of them an eldritch abominations capable of destroying civilizations (and with some of them actually destroying entire civilizations in the past). They were mutually hostile in the past, but following the Twilight War they have appeared to have at least a non-aggresion treaty, and sometimes even cooperate. Their servants are numerous, and their corruptive abilities rival that of the Pentagram (which, however, remains an enemy to them.
The Nightmare Engine includes pathetic remnants of Hexmachina and its legions of hunter/killer spirits and other abominations from the Network. While their ability to cause mayhem in Reality has been greatly reduced due to lack of Network-connected machines, certain mistakes has led to it actually establish a handful of holdouts in the Lost Lands. While the damages to the Hexmachina render it capable of mustering only a minuscule percent of its once great armies, it's still a threat. Regional rather than existential, and even than rarely to the Grand Empire (and a bit often to the servants of the Hierarchs near them), but still a threat.
The Dragon Claw is a small-scale recreation of the First Empire - a network of primitive tribes worshipping dragons as protectors and gods. Unfortunately to the world, this works - such dragons will consider themselves protectors of their tribes, and will grant it some special magic and even their own assistance. The Dragon Claw tribes are often fighting against Nine Hordes's one (whom they consider rivals), but as a whole, they will attack about anyone they can to murder and pillage. And attacking them in turn - due to their dragon god - is rarely easy.
The Wild Courts is the organization of the fae, the spirits of nature who are rarely happy with mortals developing too much of a civilization in their turf. They defend their holdouts in the Lost Lands with extreme ferocity - and are extremely diverse, with no two Wild Lords (and even their domains) being identical. They are also quite alien, and have a tendency to consider the lives of animals or even plants to be equally important to those of mortals. They can also appear even malevolent - and are very prone to falling to sufficiently powerful external influences.
The Amber Crown are the descendants of the truly malevolent fae and the elves that they offered 'asylum' when their kingdoms were falling to human invasions. What nobody expected was the children of the Wild Lords (and, typically, the de facto enslaved elven royalty) would inherit the power of their fae parent - and then murder them to usurp their domains. The result was a network of xenophobic enclaves of very powerful elves (with control over nature, like fae) that are seeking to wipe out fae and humans alike and consider themselves to be the true rulers of the continent (by the virtue of being the successor 'state' of the ancient elven empire.
The World Symphony are the forces of the khardic monotheistic god, the Overtyrant. Its overseers and archoverseers - together with a lot of truly crazy crusader-equivalents - are sometimes carving a way through the Lost Lands, obliterating the forces of evil with truly extreme brutality - and those worshipping 'false gods' with arguably lesser zeal, but still. This is more of a regional natural disaster, as even the local overlords of the Lost Lands often have problems with stopping these raiders. They are also smaller parties that are often encountered in the Lost Lands, with a variety of reasons for their presence there.
The Twelve Truths are the forces of the rehalian monotheistic god, the One God. Its angels and archangels regularly appear in the Lost Lands, typically as retaliation against its inhabitants attacks on the Rehalian Union. They can also appear as a reaction to someone persecuting a rehalian community, and sometimes to attack valid military targets just to teach the imperials a lesson. Stopping this attacks is almost impossible (it can sometimes include numerous archdaemon or even demigod-level threats), resulting in the borderlands between the Union and the Grand Empire just having to bear those attacks.